Nukezilla Review: Avatar Racedrome (Xbox Indie Games)

As videogame titles go, Avatar Racedrome is one of the more self-explanatory. With their Xbox Live Avatar in the driving seat, the player can compete in a series of races against AI or human opponents. Competition can take place either on a split screen or against seven other opponents over Xbox Live. Although Avatar Racedrome has a less than realistic driving model, giving the handling a kart-racer feel, it foregoes the power-up combat that its genre stablemates often include. Races take place in the titular racedrome, a concrete race track surrounding by a huge stadium. The game features 16 tracks and the option to play either single races or multi-race championships.

Any evaluation of a racing game boils down to two factors: how the cars handle and the tracks available to race around. In both areas, Avatar Racedrome comes up short. I found the handling to have a slippy, disconnected feel as if the cars tyres weren’t in contact with the track. Cornering felt imprecise and I didn’t feel as if I could swing into a powerslide with any regularity. In general, I just didn’t enjoy driving Avatar Racedrome’s cars. The lack of any vehicular variety doesn’t help matters. The only options available to the player are the colour of their car and the flag printed on to it. As enjoyable as the occasional burst of patriotism can be, it’s not enough to compensate for the absence of meaningful choice.

Though 16 tracks is certainly a healthy level of variety, the tracks themselves lack inspiration. Each track is a plain, concrete path at the centre of the same stadium. Avatar Racedrome’s tracks are workmanlike at best and flat-out boring at their worst. The tracks lack character to the point where regardless of their layout, I felt as if I was navigating the same track during each race. I find it difficult to blame the designer, it can’t be easy trying to match the pace and style of big-budget racing games with the meagre resources of an XNA developer. Nevertheless, there’s very little fun to be had on Avatar Racedrome’s tracks.

This leads me to my ultimate criticism of Indie racing games such as Avatar Racedrome, they just can’t stack up to the competition. I’m not a rich man but between various rental services and trading in old games, I have access to plenty of racing games. My points of comparison for Avatar Racedrome include DiRT2, Mario Kart Wii, Forza Motorsport 3, Split/Second, Blur, Wipeout HD and Burnout Paradise. Why make such a seemingly self-evident point? Well, there are Indie Games out there, in contrast to Avatar Racedrome,  that only bite off as much as they can chew. Shoot ‘em-ups, puzzle games and sidescrollers don’t need a vast development budget to be good, that isn’t the nature of the genre. When your points of comparison are Mega Man and Robotron, you don’t need to be bombarded with polygons and flashy effects to be impressed. Though there are numerous problems with what Avatar Racedrome is, the real problem is what it isn’t.

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Disclaimer: Rendercode Games sent us a review copy of this game.